Patricia Wentworth - Grey Mask

He fetched up on the island in the middle of the road with feelings of relief. The island was crowded. Under the powerful light it was possible to see one’s next door neighbour. Charles annoyed all the rest of the people on the island by being neighbour to each of them in turn. He trod on several toes, was prodded in the ribs by a very powerful umbrella, and a number of people asked him what he thought he was doing. As it was impossible to explain that he was looking for Margaret, he had to say he was sorry a good many times.

Margaret was not on the island. He came to a standstill behind abroad blue serge back. A heavily built man stood just in front of him. He wore a rough blue coat of the pea-jacket style and had about this neck a large khaki muffler-the sort of thing that one’s aunts knitted stacks of during the war. The thought passed through Charles’ mind and then pricked him so sharply that he very nearly cried out. He had made the same comparison before, within the last few days; and he had made it about the same muffler. He had stared at that blue serge back and that khaki comforter before. He had stared through the knot-hole of his mother’s cupboard and seen that lumpy shoulder and that bullet head come into view as Number Forty, the deaf janitor, opened the door to Grey Mask’s visitors.

He pushed against the man, hoping to see his face; and as he did so, he said mechanically,

“I beg your pardon.”

In a moment his interest was dashed. The man turned half round and said,

“Granted.”

Charles saw a square, fresh-coloured face, clean-shaven, and then the man turned again and stepped off the island into the road. Charles stepped off too.

Forty was stone deaf. This man was not stone deaf. He must have heard Charles say “I beg your pardon,” because he immediately turned round and said “Granted.” He might have turned because Charles pushed him; but you don’t say “Granted” when someone barges into you from behind. No, he must have heard. Then he wasn’t Forty, because Forty was deaf. Grey Mask said that Forty was deaf.

Charles considered what he knew of Forty. He was Grey Mask’s janitor-in other words a villain who was trusted by other villains. And Grey Mask said he was deaf. To Charles he was merely a bullet head, a blue serge coat, a pair of broad shoulders, and a khaki muffler.

Charles inclined strongly to the evidence of his own eyes. He followed the muffler. He followed it to the corner and along twenty yards or so of pavement. Then he followed it into a Hammersmith bus.

The bus went creaking and clanking on its way. It was quite full, and it smelt very strongly of fog, petrol and wet umbrellas. Charles sat opposite the man with the muffler and looked at him curiously. He had a square, fresh face and very blue eyes; he had the look of a man who has followed the sea. Forty had been with Mr. Standing on his yacht. But Forty was deaf, and this man wasn’t deaf.

Just on the impulse Charles leaned across and addressed him.

“Bad fog-isn’t it? I’m glad I’m not at sea.”

The man looked at Charles after a pleasant puzzled fashion and shook his head.

“Sorry, sir, but I’m deaf.”

Charles raised his voice:

“I only said it was a bad fog.”

He shook his head again and smiled deprecatingly.

“It’s no good, sir. Hill 60 going up was the last thing I heard.”

The other people in the bus looked round with interest. A fat woman in a brown velvet dress and stout laced boots said, “What a shime!”

Charles sat back and closed his eyes. Grey Mask had said Forty was deaf-and that this was Forty, Charles had now no more doubt than that he himself was Charles Moray; yet Forty, apologised to by a casual stranger in a fog-no, let’s get it clearer, Forty taken unawares-had answered a casual stranger’s apology. But Forty in a crowded lighted bus not only maintained that he was stone deaf but produced a picturesque reminiscence to account for it. What did it mean?

Charles thought that he would find out what it meant; and when presently the man in the muffler got out of the bus, Charles got out too.

“The one point about this perfectly beastly weather,” he explained to Archie over dinner, “is that you can follow a fellow without his spotting you. I followed him very successfully and tracked him to his lair. He appears to be lodging at No. 5, Gladys Villas, Chiswick. The house belongs to an old lady and her daughter who’ve been there for about forty years-I found that out at the grocer’s. But there I’m stuck. The old lady’s name is Brown, and she’s the widow of a sea captain. I could have found out lots more of that sort of thing. But how am I going to find out the things I want to know about Forty?”

“Get a trained sleuth to do it,” said Archie firmly. “That’s what they’re for. I can put you on to one if you like.”

“A good man?”

“A sleuthess,” said Archie impressively. “A perfect wonder-has old Sherlock boiled.”

Charles frowned.

“A woman?”

“Well, a sleuthess. She’s not exactly what you’d call a little bit of fluff, you know.”

“What’s her name?”

“Maud Silver.”

“Mrs. or Miss?”

“My dear old bean!”

“Well-which is she?”

“Single as a Michaelmas daisy,” said Archie.

“But who is she? And why drag in a sleuthess when there are lots of perfectly good sleuths?”

“Well,” said Archie, “I put my money on Maud. I only saw her once, and she didn’t make my heart beat any faster. I went to see her because my cousin Emmeline Foster was in the dickens of a hole. She’d done one of the silly sort of things women manage to do-can’t imagine how they think of them myself. I can’t give you the lurid details; but what it amounted to was that she’d gone and lost the family jewels, and she was shakin’ in her shoes for fear her mother-in-law would find out. Well, little Maudie got them back. No fuss, no scandal, no painful family scene-a very neat piece of work. That’s only one story. I know half a dozen more, because Emmeline just rushed round with her mouth open tellin’ all her friends what a wonder Maudie was, and all the friends who had private scrapes of their own went and bleated to Maudie about ’em, and when Maudie had got ’em all straightened up again, they came back and told Emmeline, and Emmeline told me.”

Charles took down Miss Maud Silver’s address. If she specialized in getting silly women out of messes, she would just about suit his book. He put the address away in his pocket-book, and as he looked up he caught sight of Freddy Pelham dining at a table with Massiter, the artist, and a large, dull, respectable couple whom Charles did not know. Massiter had the air of a man who is bored to the verge of coma. Freddy looked so forlorn that Charles felt a genuine pang of pity.

Later, when he and Archie were going out, he found himself almost touching Freddy in the doorway, and in a moment Freddy was shaking him by the hand.

“My dear fellow! You’re back-yes, back! Dear me, you’re back again.!”

“As you see,” said Charles.

Freddy dropped the hand he had been shaking; his little grey eyes looked deprecatingly at the young man whom his step-daughter had jilted; his rather high and plaintive voice became more plaintive still.

“My dear fellow-you’re back! Pleased to see you-very pleased to see you!”

“I’m pleased to be back,” said Charles cheerfully.

At another time it might have amused him to observe Freddy’s embarrassment. He plunged straight into the cause of it.

“By the way, can you give me Margaret’s address?”

Freddy blinked.

“Margaret’s address-er-Margaret’s address?”